


A history of dragons in popular culture

by Deputychairman



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: F/M, Geralt internally when he sees them together:, M/M, Multi, WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK, and accidentally on purpose sleep together, and he is Into That, and instead of playing Despacito he writes a song for her, bitch about Geralt, ft. the only m/f dynamic that means anything:, if she can't have him executed, not to make Geralt jealous you understand!, only a jealous threesome can resolve that kind of mess, there's too much equality going on, this is the story of that post, where Yennefer & Jaskier become drinking buddies after the dragon hunt breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23264560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: “I wanted a point of comparison,” she said. “Because he looks at me like he really – loves me, or something.”“Yeah,” said Jaskier, resigned. “He does that sometimes. Isn’t it a bitch?”They were half way through the second bottle by now, and their shoulders were touching. She could feel the hard line of Jaskier’s thigh against hers. She was very aware of the chest hair visible at the open neck of his shirt, and how he could probably see down her dress from here. She hadn’t moved to put any distance between them and neither had he.“Why are we still talking about him? I don’t care about Geralt of Rivia any more,” lied Yennefer.“Nor do I,” Jaskier lied back.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 205
Kudos: 2147
Collections: break the awkward come undone





	A history of dragons in popular culture

The path down from the mountains was steep and the stones slid treacherously underfoot, and it took all Jaskier’s concentration to get down without falling. He was grateful for it. One of the dwarves lost his footing behind him, and Jaskier caught him with a “woah, there!” before he tumbled off a precipice. When he had to focus on staying alive, he could.

Jaskier had always travelled alone part of the year. It wasn’t like he was _always_ in Geralt’s shadow.

He had his own reputation, established over many years and many songs and poems and plenty of them nothing to do with Witchers. So it had been no different, making his way down the mountain with the jubilant dwarves clutching dragon teeth, and then heading off to Redania where he knew they’d appreciate him.

It wasn’t like they usually had big emotional leavetakings either. Jaskier had once stalked off with a muttered, _fuck you too_ and not seen Geralt for three days. He had headed back to Oxenburg for the winter with barely a backward glance, not to hear from Geralt until spring.

But perhaps the difference had been his complete certainty that he _would_ hear from Geralt again. That Geralt would be glad to see him, even if he sometimes pretended he wasn’t because he was just like that.

The first time Jaskier had hugged him in greeting he’d stood there like a stone, scowling, until Jaskier let him go, but Jaskier got the feeling he liked it. When Geralt really didn’t like people doing something, he made them stop, and he’d never said or done anything to make Jaskier stop hugging him.

Maybe there had been something different about parting ways this time, but heartbreak was a poet’s currency. Not that he would quite have called himself heartbroken – _Geralt_ was heartbroken alright, over the sorceress, and Jaskier was just the collateral damage. It stung more than he cared to admit, to be honest, but it wasn’t heartbreak. Maybe Geralt expected him to be waiting at the foot of the mountain, ready to pretend nothing had happened, but Jaskier was better at looking out for himself than Geralt gave him credit for, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand the humiliation of being left behind like he was worth less than a horse. No disrespect to Roach, who was a very fine horse and had always treated him with perfect politeness, but some stress points didn’t need testing.

Jaskier had fed her an apple and gone on his way, on the road he knew Geralt wouldn’t take.

It took him half a day to compose a bitter, angry song about Yennefer of Vengerberg and her poisoned kisses, and he wrote it down and got it out of his head and slept in a barn in exchange for a very pleasant evening playing much more cheerful songs in the farmhouse kitchen.

In the morning he wasn’t even angry with Yennefer any more, because she didn’t owe him anything and she hadn’t asked to have her fate tied to Geralt’s, had she? She was beautiful and tragic and could never have what she wanted the most, and part of him had quite enjoyed having someone to talk to when Geralt went very silent. Geralt had many qualities, but helping a friend practice their wordplay and verbal sparring for when they had to return to civilised society wasn’t one of them.

He wrote the dragon song (it didn’t have the titular capital letters when he wrote it, because in his head it was a song about the sorceress and how Geralt had fucked her over; maybe he hadn’t meant to, but he still had) sitting in the sun outside a roadside inn, and it was easy: one of those songs that seemed to appear fully formed in his head, and all he had to do was let it out. A djinn let loose from the bottle.

A handful of farmers and a merchant were half listening, and when he played the whole thing through one of them ambled over to ask him if he was singing about King Niedamir’s dragon hunt, and was that really what had happened?

“Yes,” Jaskier told him, because he committed to his art and even if some of the details weren’t technically true then they were at least _poetically_ true and that was what counted. They cajoled him into the tavern to play it with free drinks and a meal he couldn’t have paid for, and he spent the night in the bed of a friendly horse-trader with soulful dark eyes and strong hands who kissed him very sweetly goodbye in the morning and told him breakfast was already paid for if he wanted to eat before he set off.

He didn’t normally sleep with men, on the road, but he couldn’t remember why not any more.

*

He’d fought with Geralt before, too. Lots of times.

Jaskier even took a swing at him once, when he was 19 or 20, and both of them in their cups. Jaskier much deeper in his cups, obviously, or he wouldn’t have swung. Geralt had caught his wrist without even trying, scowling, and when he struggled, grabbed him by the collar and shoved him against a tree. Hard, but not as hard as he could have done, because if he’d done it hard Geralt could have killed him. Even drunk, Jaskier had always known Geralt wouldn’t kill him.

“Stop it,” he’d growled, and Jaskier had.

But it had marked the beginning of a new physicality between them. In the little tent in the cold, Geralt muttered, “Come over here,” and Jaskier, astonished, had come. Slid under the blanket Geralt held up for him and fell asleep against the warm cliff of his back, holding on with an arm around Geralt’s waist.

He woke up hungover and desperately, mortifyingly hard, the way you only can when you’re 19 or 20. Nothing happened that time though. He’d shifted away before Geralt noticed, (at least, he hoped it was before Geralt noticed) rolled onto his belly and in the fog of last night’s alcohol, gone back to sleep.

It took another year at least – or was it two, even? - of curling up together under the same blanket whenever they travelled together before Geralt really relaxed around him, like the most extreme game of chicken ever. _I don’t trust you, so I’ll sleep with your breath on the back of my neck to prove I’m not afraid_. He pretended not to notice Jaskier wanted him, and Jaskier never brought it to his attention, and it was _fine._ It added spice to the friendship, knowing that he would say yes in a heartbeat if Geralt ever asked.

Geralt never really did ask. Saying things out loud had never been his thing.

One evening in the little tent he just rolled onto his side so they were looking at each other, and brushed the back of his hand very gently against Jaskier’s chest. Jaskier had caught his breath and shifted closer, half convinced he was reading this entirely wrong and about to get pushed off the bedroll to sleep in the forest where something would eat him.

But he wasn’t. They’d blinked at each other for a few endless seconds without a word being said, and then it honestly felt like neither of them had moved but they were kissing all the same, Geralt’s hand sliding round to the small of his back and pulling their bodies together. Jaskier gave as good as he got; it felt more balanced, more like equals, than he sometimes felt around Geralt. He realised he probably had more experience, of the two of them. Possibly not in sheer numbers, given that Geralt was much older and clearly liked sex, but in something pretty fundamental like confidence, or creativity, or natural aptitude.

He’d dared to nudge Geralt onto his back and Geralt had lain back obligingly and let Jaskier suck his cock like he’d wanted to do for years now. He did it very soft and slow because he could feel Geralt trembling and thought he might be embarrassed if Jaskier made him come too fast, and nobody else that he could see was ever soft and slow with Geralt. He came pretty fast anyway, but then so did Jaskier with Geralt’s big hand wrapped around his cock and Geralt’s tongue in his mouth.

It was one of the least verbal seductions Jaskier had been treated to, and the one he’d liked the best. Almost 20 years later, he could say that.

Maybe the horse trader had had an ear for music as well as those dark eyes and strong hands, or maybe it was the farmers, but the Dragon Song took on a life of its own. It followed Jaskier to the coast and back inland, into towns and villages, and overtook him when he looped back inland in the autumn. People who cared about things like that knew that it was Jaskier’s song even if all the travelling bards were singing it now, and the renown was enough to get him invited to play at several festivals and banquets that paid much better than he’d been expecting.

If he had been harbouring a grudge against Yennefer of Vengerberg, that season’s coin would have gone a long way to laying it to rest. He asked about her sometimes, if anybody seemed to know about mages and sorceresses and witches. Nobody he spoke to had ever seen her though.

He didn’t ask about Geralt at all.

***

There had always been songs about dragons. Humans liked to believe in the nobility of their foe, even as they slaughtered the. There was more virtue in slaying an all powerful dragon than a slimy monster creeping in the mud. There had probably always been songs about witches too: old, ugly, malevolent witches, to frighten children and give villagers a nice safe thrill around the winter fireside. 

There were very few songs about dragons and witches together, especially not when the witch was young and beautiful and ends the song just as powerful and undefeated as she had begun.

Yennefer of Vengerberg wasn’t young, but she was beautiful and powerful and mostly undefeated. The beauty was part of the power at first, but now if she could choose she’d give it all back, stay twisted but whole. She’d leave this life behind, find a castle and use all her magic to keep it safe for a child to grow up there. She’d forget about politics and earthly power, and about men and spells and wishes that bind people together who didn’t want to be bound. Four marks changing hands or a wish made to a djinn, what difference did it make really? There was no escape from either.

Popular songs were annoying and she didn’t listen to them, except there was a dragon hunt fresh in her mind and she was a beautiful witch and everybody was singing it when she reached the town. They were singing it in roadside taverns, and as she made her way towards Redania as summer cooled into early autumn, she started to hear it in the villages and great houses too.

It wasn’t until the leaves were turning and she was sitting by the fire in the caravanserai at Vitarya that she really listened to the words.

“Who are they singing about?” she asked the woman next to her.

“A mage from Yengerberg – hey, it could be you, with the violet eyes!” she replied, and chuckled heartily at her own joke, because witches from songs never appear beside you at the fireside on an autumn evening.

Geralt’s bard must have written it, but there was no white-haired Witcher in the song. Just Yennefer, nameless but clearly recognisable as the sorceress of awesome power and violet eyes, slaying the dragon despite her betrayal by the man she loves. So maybe Geralt was in the song after all.

*

A child in a market whispered in awe to her mother, “It’s her! From the dragon song! Look, mama, look, she’s got violet eyes and long black hair!”

Yennefer smiled at the girl, pressed a finger to her lips with a wild kind of delight crackling across her skin.

The child was too stunned to return the smile, but she put a complicit finger on her lips in return before darting away to follow her mother.

Yennefer crossed the market square with her head held high, wrapped in the power of that recognition. Perhaps she would never have a child of her own, but somebody else’s knew who she was.

*

In the Akarima harvest festival, she found Jaskier himself.

Yennefer had spent a whole human lifetime at court where a public face was everything. Nobody looking at her now would have known that her heart was pounding at the thought that if Jaskier was here, then Geralt might be here too, that her senses had failed her and led her straight to him when all she wanted was to keep away. She flung out a finding spell, and it crackled faintly and dissipated with no target anywhere near: just the bard. 

For a moment she felt nothing but relief, before a sharp wave of disappointment reminded her that whatever she might want, the djinn’s magic still held.

Yennefer watched him from a safe distance, torn. She should be leaving everything and everyone connected to Geralt of fucking Rivia behind, but she couldn’t turn tail and flee from his little sidekick. She was here for the contract the merchant’s guild was offering, and she would lose it if she left now.

Jaskier was playing to an appreciative, well-dressed audience at the expensive end of the courtyard, and there was no way into the hall without going past him.

“Fuck,” she said out loud, and it didn’t help.

From where she stood in the shadows, she could see Jaskier perfectly. He was well-dressed as usual, something dark blue that fit him nicely, and he moved with a relaxed grace that she’d never paid any attention to before. She’d never paid any attention to him at all, except to trade witty insults. She’d made him laugh once.

The crowd here certainly seemed to like him. There was thunderous applause when the song finished, some banter with the front row, and a number of elegant ladies whispering to each other as they watched him.

Having met him coughing up blood and half dead, and only ever seen him in Geralt’s shadow since, the idea that women might find him attractive had honestly never crossed her mind, but the evidence that they did was all around her and that was enough to make up her mind. Yennefer had always wanted what other people had. All these women wanted the bard’s attention, and Yennefer was going to be the one to get it.

When he finished his song, she crossed the courtyard to stand in front of him, her whole posture radiating disdain, until he noticed her.

She was petty enough to enjoy his jolt of alarm when he did, and it was only a few seconds before he was stepping down from the platform, ignoring all the tossed hair and charming smiles to talk to _her_.

“Hello, Yennefer,” he said warily. “Are you here to cause trouble? Or to murder me? Maybe you're multitasking and can do both?”

“You wrote a song about me, Jaskier. I came to thank you.”

That put him on the spot. “Excuse me, I wrote a song about a _dragon_. You just happen to be in it.”

“As the hero.”

He shrugged it off. “Natural career progression, the people were tired of monster slaying. It was time to move on to something more epic. Something nobler.”

“I’m surprised Geralt lets his pet bard write songs about me, of all people. What does he think of it?” Oh, she was a fool for asking, she had just handed him his opening -

But he didn’t take it.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, looking at his feet and deliberately, unconvincingly casual.

“Oh no? You don’t follow him around everywhere he goes, desperate for his attention?”

Jaskier’s face flickered. Rather than answer, he strummed the damn lute and sang teasingly, _“The kettle called the pot black, It takes one to know one!”_

Stung, she sneered, “I always assumed he was fucking you when I wasn’t around.”

“Ah, well, a lot of people thought that, but -” he looked up like he was searching the stars for inspiration. Apparently they didn’t answer, because his gaze dropped back to hers and he shrugged. “Well, he was. But not any more.”

 _That_ was a surprise, the unvarnished delivery as much as the substance of it. What on earth had possessed him to tell her? Handing her a knife, waiting for her to eviscerate him for rolling over for the Witcher and getting left behind like a lame dog - but she was struck with an unwanted pang of sympathy instead. What a sorry pair of fools they both were, years spent at each other’s throats over Geralt of fucking Rivia who resorted to djinn magic to trap her _,_ and threw away what his friend freely offered.

They looked at each other in a silent moment of understanding.

“So you made the smart choice to move on and start singing about me instead?” Yennefer asked, getting them back on track. 

“I try to avoid making smart choices – they’re _so_ boring, don’t you think? - so I don’t know about _moving on_ , exactly. But he did say some, ah – things, after you left. Uncalled for things.”

She raised her eyebrows expectantly and waited for more, trusting that a silence to fill would always be more irresistible to him than any threat could be.

And it was. Jaskier burst out: “He was a complete _dick_ to me, if you must know! He was – upset, about you, obviously, it was all about you - but you’d gone and I was still there, so he took it out on me and apparently we’re not remotely friends like I thought we were. Wait, why am I telling you this?”

“Maybe I’ve bewitched you.”

“Oh god, have you?”

“Wouldn’t that be convenient for you. You could gossip about Geralt without any of it being your fault.”

“You haven’t actually bewitched me, have you? I don’t feel very bewitched.” He paused. “What does being bewitched feel like?”

She scoffed. “I haven’t bewitched you, Jaskier. I didn’t need to.”

“Oh. Well. Look, to put the record straight: I haven’t seen Geralt since the dragon hunt, I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. I’m pursuing other artistic opportunities.”

“Is that what you’re calling it? I thought you were trying to make him jealous by singing about me, but if I’m an artistic opportunity then that’s different.”

“Yes, Yennefer, you’re an artistic opportunity, like war and perfidy and tragic, painful death,” he said with an elaborate, mocking bow.

“Well, if you’re in the market for a tragic, painful death…” she replied, raising her hands menacingly. Not that she’d see it through, not really, but Jaskier didn’t need to know that. He backed away, wide-eyed, reaching for the lute slung across his shoulder. He shot her a glance of clear provocation, a wordless _stop me if you can_ , before beginning to play the first chords of the Dragon Song.

He was still looking her right in the eye as he started to sing, his clear, strong voice rising above the hum of drunken conversation, and almost at once a space opened up around them. People were turning to listen, asking each other who she was, the strange woman being serenaded with the Dragon Song.

It didn’t take them long to work it out. Jaskier circled her as he sang, barely breaking eye contact, and gesturing to her with arch, exaggerated movements, performing both for her and somehow _at_ her.

A murmur of recognition ran through the crowd as they realised who she was. She was Yennefer of Vengerberg, one of the most powerful mages on the continent, and these people knew who she was because of a _song_.

It wasn’t magic, but Yennefer knew power when she saw it.

The merchant’s guild came to her after that, offered her their fat contract to see her through the winter. All the fine people of Akarima wanted to pay their respects to their famous new mage.

It was almost dawn when she walked out, footsteps ringing like bells on the wine-stained cobbles and a bottle still in her hand. Just before she stepped through the portal, there was Jaskier again, sprawled on a bench. If it wasn’t for the lute at his feet she might not have recognised him, because there was a woman on top of him with her hair coming lose, and she honestly had assumed his tastes lay in other directions. But then she knew all about the rocks that can block the way you want to go, and the choices you make when your preferred path is closed to you.

He looked up as she passed and she saw him, really saw him, both of them too tired and too drunk to pretend. Yenn raised the bottle in a sardonic salute, and he propped himself up on his elbows and acknowledged the gesture with a nod before his companion pushed him down again, and she lost sight of him behind a curtain of the woman’s hair.

***

Geralt had been sorry long before he got to the bottom of the mountain, and he stayed sorry long after he lost sight of it in the distance of the open plain.

It was for the best, though. He didn’t know enough about djinn magic to be sure it hadn’t affected the way they felt, and maybe Yennefer was right, maybe none of it was real. He didn’t have a lot to compare it to.

The only useful reference point might have been Jaskier, who was somebody he liked and who he also fucked, but it wasn’t the same. First Jaskier had, inexplicably, liked him, then he had grown to like Jaskier, and then, a couple of years down the line, they’d started sleeping together. In all senses: sleeping under the same blanket because Jaskier was cold, and it was stupid to listen to him shiver when they could just share body heat; and then when Geralt was horny and lonely and just for once didn’t want to see fear in a whore’s eyes in order to fuck somebody, in the other sense too. He was well aware that Jaskier would have fucked him a lot sooner if he’d only said the word, but it was an unnecessary complication. He’d pretended not to notice Jaskier’s persistent interest and hoped he would grow out of it, though in the end Geralt was glad he hadn’t.

He probably had _now,_ though.

In contrast, Geralt had known Yennefer for all of a day before they’d sat up in the rubble of that ruined house and just – gone for it, which had honestly never happened to him before. There had been no particular signs that she found him attractive before he made his wish. Yes, she had gotten into the bath with him, but she’d made him turn his back and he’d thought then and still thought now that she had just been trying to disconcert him rather than expressing some sudden burning passion for his muddy and exhausted self. In Geralt’s experience, sudden burning passion from beautiful women tended to have ulterior motives, most often financial, and him turning up with a bleeding, choking, half-dead Jaskier was unlikely to have changed that fundamental law of the world.

He, on the other hand, had definitely found _her_ attractive, from the first moment he saw her. For her beauty, obviously, but mostly for her insolent certainty in her own power, the sheer _balls_ it took to bewitch half a village into an orgy and then send them away with a single word when something more interesting turned up.

She had had her reasons for all of it, he assumed. It was none of his business what they were.

As he walked Roach across the lonely plain, he was fairly sure that Yennefer was right. Whatever he was feeling, it wasn’t _real_. Things that weren’t real couldn’t hurt him. He would just carry on as he always had. Kill monsters, get paid sometimes, and stay away from humans as much as he could.

He headed north, towards Posada. They always had something nasty gutting sheep or rotting the grain, something that would need all his focus and keep him busy in marshes and away from people. He slept in copses and on the leeside of hills, didn’t bother with the tent and ate his food raw.

When he did have to pass through hamlets and villages for news of beasts or in especially bad weather, he kept himself to himself and didn’t listen to gossip or singing or news from the Continent.

He never had paid much attention to music, even when Jaskier was with him. Especially when Jaskier was with him. Jaskier would provide all the disparaging running commentary he could stand, highly technical critiques of finger work and tempo and harmony that he couldn’t really have been expecting Geralt to engage with, so Geralt didn’t.

Sometimes he used to sit in the darkest corner he could find if Jaskier played, though, and look like he wasn’t enjoying himself. It had become a bit of a game, to see if he could slip in while everyone’s attention was on the bard. Jaskier nearly always noticed him, but it was easier for him because he knew about the game and he knew what Geralt looked like, plus he tended to be facing the right way while everyone else had their back to the door to watch the performance. People often did thrown coins to him when Jaskier played that song, but more often he glowered at them and the coin went to tip the musician instead. Which ended up the same thing, because whenever Jaskier had coin he shared it, and if he could afford a room then they shared that too. It had seemed fair at the time, that if the song was about him he was entitled to some of the proceeds, but in hindsight he was less sure.

Once or twice Jaskier had outright serenaded him, in front of all the drinkers and drunks and malingerers who made up his audience. Geralt had hated it, all those eyes on him like so many pounds of horseflesh, but he had gritted his teeth and pretended no more than annoyance. Jaskier would have taken it for granted, that he was annoyed.

“Sorry, you didn’t like that, did you?” Jaskier had said after the second time, sliding onto the bench beside him in his dark corner. He pushed a drink across the table to him apologetically and when Geralt didn’t touch it, he clinked his own tankard against it anyway and said, “Cheers.”

“Hm,” Geralt had said back.

Jaskier wiped foam from his top lip and watched him expectantly, until he reached for the tankard and drained it in three swallows.

“The rumours are true – the Witcher does swallow!” then without waiting for Geralt to answer he added, “and I started those rumours myself, so I ought to know.”

This had been before he’d finally taken Jaskier up on his silent offer, so there was no way he could know anything of the sort. And he could hardly be extrapolating from the last town when they had gone to a brothel together, with so little coin that private rooms were out of the question, and had ended up side by side in some dim shared space, the women unimpressed by them and not bothering to hide it.

Geralt did always try to be considerate, because why traumatise a woman when you could just as easily not, and he never knew when he might come back through a town and want to not be stoned out of it. He made a point of bathing before he turned up, following the house rules and not taking too long to finish, and with those ground rules he’d got on just fine so far. Not that they’d broken any rules this time either, but he’d been disconcerted by Jaskier’s nearness, kept glancing over at him, distracted by how he’d charmed the tired whore into at least pretending to come for him.

He’d said, “You, my beautiful dark lady, are a generous and talented performer. That was extremely convincing, thank you, my ego is soothed,” and the woman had scoffed at him fondly and told him to get on, now. But the way her pulse was racing and her body temperature had spiked, Geralt could tell it had been for real. 

“Your friend’s watching us,” she murmured to Jaskier as he chased his own completion.

Jaskier had turned to him with an unfocused, pleasure-soft smile, hair falling into his face, and said, “We’ll just have to watch him right back, then,” and Geralt had come like that, with Jaskier’s blue gaze on him, eyes strangely dark in the gloom.

That was the only thing Jaskier knew about whether he might spit or swallow – precisely nothing, because he’d been with a woman and no swallowing was even an option.

Dwelling on things like that was only a distraction now, so when he could, he avoided places they played music.

So it took him a long time to notice they were playing the same song everywhere, and when he did notice it just irritated him. It would have been wasteful and stupid to walk out on a half-finished meal just because a second-rate bard started a song he didn’t like – the sort of thing Jaskier might have done, but not Geralt. Music was just background noise. Geralt clenched his teeth and then carried on eating, head down, braced for it to be over. There was something insinuatingly familiar about it, like someone ruffling his hair from behind, that made it hard to tune out.

“ _You_ couldn’t kill a dragon, couldya Witcher?” a belligerently drunk voice slurred at his elbow.

Geralt stopped eating, bread half way to his mouth, and turned to look at the speaker.

A man in his middle age, with the missing teeth and crooked nose of a regular drunken brawler. Geralt turned back to his plate and put the bread in his mouth.

But the bard had sensed sport. He came closer – not as close as the drunk, but close enough to for him to smell the garlic and stale pork fat on his breath, which was too close as far as Geralt was concerned - and started the song again. This time he was singing it at Geralt, seeing if he could get a reaction out of him. Jaskier always said singling someone out of the crowd was a mediocre musician’s sleight of hand: everyone would be watching how the victim reacted, and not paying attention when the bard sang off-key.

Geralt looked up once and again turned back to his food - he wasn’t going to give them a show. He would eat this and get out.

And he was going to do that, up until he listened to the words. A lot of poetic nonsense, with worlds like iridescent and lambent. A sorceress with violet eyes slaying a golden dragon, a white-haired lover who tried to trap her.

Too much coincidence to be anything but King Niedemir’s dragon hunt, or to be anybody but Yennefer.

Geralt wiped his plate with the last of the bread, and turned in his chair to stare at the singer. He had been told his natural expression was “somewhere between glowering and murderous, depending on the light”, and he had never seen any need to change it. 

(Was it Jaskier or Yennefer who had said that? A rare occasion with just the three of them around a table, bard and witch sniping at each other and needling him even though he could tell they both wanted him. Or wanted to get one over on the other, which amounted to the same thing, although it was strange to realise that he’d ended up some kind of prize for the two of them to fight over. A djinn might have made Yennefer think she loved him, but that didn’t mean he was more important than getting one over on Jaskier, or that she had to be particularly nice to him.

He didn’t see her very often so he’d gone to bed with her that night, and when she vanished he’d had the devil’s own time tracking Jaskier down in somebody else’s bed.)

The mediocre singer didn’t last long under Geralt’s steady gaze, with its glowering-to-murderous qualities. Geralt hadn’t ever paid attention to the song before, but he could tell the bard had run out of courage before the end.

“What about the rest?” he asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother you, sir Witcher,” simpered the singer, obviously realising he had grievously misread his target.

“You’re bothering me by singing half a song. Sing the rest.”

So he sang the rest, poorly, as Geralt watched him through narrowed eyes and didn’t let anything he was feeling show on his face. The rendition was bad but the song was – not bad, and it got its point across quite nicely. Geralt didn’t know anything about music but there was no way this sorry fool had composed it.

“Who wrote it?”

The singer shook his head. “I don’t know, my liege. An Oxenfurt bard, they say?”

“Hmm,” Geralt growled, because he was thinking and because he could tell it would be frightening without him having to say anything overtly threatening.

Geralt didn’t torment humans for sport, and he would never have wasted a second on this one, but if somebody came to him looking for trouble then he didn’t think it was all that wrong of him to give them a fright.

“They say he was on the hunt, my lord! And now wanders the Continent, singing the glory of a great mage and her unworthy lover!”

Geralt carefully didn’t feel anything at all. This man stank of grease and he knew nothing, and Geralt didn’t feel anything about anything because there was no point. A Witcher killed monsters and sometimes got paid, and it was what it was.

“Write the words down and go away,” he snarled.

***

Next time Yennefer entered a provincial court banquet, the Dragon Song started playing as she crossed the threshold like a fanfare. This wasn’t like last time, when it had been just Jaskier in the courtyard with his lute: it was a whole chamber orchestra of musicians with pipe, lute and drum, and above them all a voice singing about _her_.

Heads turned, conversation stopped, and everyone, everyone, everyone in the great hall noticed as Yennefer of Vengerberg walked in.

Magic wasn’t real and the story in the song wasn’t true, but they both still worked, didn’t they?

She didn’t need to see him to know that the singer was Jaskier. She recognised his voice now, and besides, who else would have saved a song like that for her grand entrance? If she’d had him at her beck and call for 20 years like Geralt had, the whole Continent would know who she was. Her own power could get her a long way – and gods, it _had_ , a world away from that fucking pigsty – but a song on everybody’s lips could help get her even further.

And if she was really, really honest with herself, a part of it was working on her, too. Nobody had ever written a song for her before, and if Geralt was fool enough to throw that away, Yennefer wasn’t. 

“Well done, Jaskier,” she said, appearing from behind him and making him jump. “You knew I was here before I knew you were.”

“Ah, but that’s because you don’t care where I am,” he said, giving her a mocking bow. “I, on the other hand, make a point of knowing the whereabouts of powerful mages who might decide to kill me.”

That startled a laugh out of her. “Or I might decide not to. You wrote a song for me. Well. To piss off Geralt. Same difference.”

Somebody came up behind Jaskier then, whispered in his ear with poorly-concealed curiosity directed at her.

“Come and have a drink with me when you finish,” she said, turning on her heel without waiting for his answer. She honestly had no idea if he would come, but for some reason her heart was beating faster, as if she’d suggested something scandalous.

He did come.

He sought her out in her dark corner bearing a very superior bottle of wine and two glasses, and the look of a man about to do something rash he knew he might regret, but was absolutely going to go ahead and do anyway. A familiar look, on Jaskier, although she hadn’t thought she knew him well enough to say what was familiar and what was not.

“The Countess of Lareida recommends you, by the way. She tells me you have a musician’s hands and a musician’s tongue,” she said as he poured the wine, curious to see if she could startle him into spilling it.

He looked up, definitely startled, but not a drop spilled.

Maybe travelling with a Witcher gave you steady hands. Steady, perhaps, but never still: he was all contrast to Geralt’s quiet composure, talking fast and emphatic, leaning in towards here then back to recline against the bench seat, gesturing with theatrical grace as he spoke. She couldn’t get the White Wolf out of her head.

“Tell me how you first met him,” she said, blunt but not a command. If he thought he couldn’t refuse then he’d lie to her.

He was watching her steadily, but at that his gaze dropped to his glass.

“Well,” he stalled.

“Or don’t. You know how _I_ met him: I wanted to know how other people cross paths with a Witcher then carry on doing it.”

“Ha. Well. It’s not actually a very good story – I should make up a better one, maybe I will, this winter – but I just saw him brooding in an unappreciative tavern, and I couldn’t resist trying to talk to the one man there who was ignoring me.”

“Just, for no reason at all. You went up to him without knowing who he was.”

“I have _eyes_ , it wasn’t no reason at all – and I guessed who he was pretty quickly. Then I followed him to Dol Blathanna where he was supposed to hunt a devil, even though he told me not to and kept trying to get rid of me,” he pulled a rueful face. “I definitely need a better story for this. In my defence, I was 19 and had no sense of danger.”

“If you’re sitting here with me, it suggests you still don’t.”

“Thank you for that timely reminder, just when I was starting to relax,” he raised his glass to her and drained it.

She pushed the bottle over to him. It was nice to drink with someone who accepted the status quo without appearing to want to change it. He seemed to enjoy being gently threatened, and she couldn’t deny she got a little thrill out of how easily he accepted the power balance between them. How relaxing, not to have to be constantly proving to a man that she had the upper hand.

“I met him in a middle of an orgy,” she said. “He strode in there unannounced, dirty, dressed all in black, didn’t even blink. He was totally focused on saving your life. He was carrying you, and you were coughing up blood and dying.”

“And you only kept me alive because you wanted to capture the djinn, I remember. No hard feelings though,” Jaskier added. “Completely understandable.”

If she wasn’t drunk, and lonely, she would never have asked. But she was.

“Do _you_ think it’s djinn magic making me feel like this about him?”

There was a plaintive note in her voice she didn’t like at all, but Jaskier just leaned closer in what looked like sympathy, and she surprised herself by accepting it. If anybody could understand what this was like, it was Jaskier.

“I don’t know. He is – a lot, I suppose. He’s the sort of person you’ve got to have _some_ kind of feeling about. Obviously I did. Do,” he amended regretfully.

“And what about him? Is it only the djinn drawing him to me?” Probably she was drunk, to be talking like this, but she didn’t care. “Is he different, with other people? What’s he like with _you?”_

Jaskier blinked at her, opened his mouth and closed it again, blushing. “What’s he like with me in the sense of…” he made an expressive gesture with his hands that out of context would not have looked remotely sexual, but in the middle of this conversation clearly was.

That wasn’t what she meant. Or was it? How a man fucked could tell you a lot about how he felt. She’d had men who went after their own pleasure and thought it was all over when they found it. Men who tried to gaze into her eyes and hold her hand. Once there had been a fool who thought he could grab her by the neck and hold her down. He was dead now, of course.

“I’m asking if he fucks you hard and fast from behind and then rolls over and goes to sleep, or if he’s loving and gentle and says your name when he comes.”

She made no effort to disguise the crudity of what she was asking, and a thrill ran through her at the image. The contrast of brutal and tender, of Geralt’s powerful body, fucking Jaskier with all his strength, or stroking his hair out of his face. Both together. 

She’d managed to shock Jaskier at last, anyway. “Wow. That’s a – that’s a – very direct question. Which I have. I’ve never – wow. Talked about. Um.”

“Neither have I, what do you think? That witches fly home to a coven where we braid each other’s hair and talk about our lovers?”

“No, but it would make a _great_ song, d’you mind if I just jot that down…?”

Yennefer just looked at him. Fine, she’d gone too far and he wouldn’t tell her.

“I wanted a point of comparison,” she said. “Because he looks at me like he really – loves me, or something.”

“Yeah,” said Jaskier, resigned. “He does that sometimes. Isn’t it a bitch?”

They were half way through the second bottle by now, and their shoulders were touching. She could feel the hard line of Jaskier’s thigh against hers. She was very aware of the chest hair visible at the open neck of his shirt, and how he could probably see down her dress from here. She hadn’t moved to put any distance between them and neither had he.

“Why are we still talking about him? I don’t care about Geralt of Rivia any more,” lied Yennefer.

“Nor do I,” Jaskier lied back.

She downed the rest of her drink and looked up at him. He was taller than she remembered, with broader shoulders, but then she’d never sat this close to him before. He smelled good, clean and very male at the same time. His eyes were very, very blue and she liked the way he moved his hands when he talked, and the way he kept looking at her like he couldn’t help it.

A sense memory came back to her: her magic, shoving him against a wall, the line of his body against hers for just a second as she’d threatened him, and – oh, yes, his soft cock in her hand - before he’d wriggled away in terror. So she had been this close before, but he wasn’t terrified now.

“You know what we could do now,” Yennefer said slowly, shifting so she could see his face better.

“Somehow I don’t think you’re about to say, go home and get an early night.”

“No, I’m not,” she agreed.

He still didn’t back away. He licked his lips and she could feel his heartbeat speed up, like he was waiting for her to do something. He’d been waiting for her to do something thiswhole time. Maybe not _this,_ but something.

So Yennefer put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down to kiss him.

He held still, letting her press her lips to his, gentle so that he could still turn her down if he was going to. She didn’t think he was going to. When she pulled back to see his face, he was soft-eyed and willing, already leaning in towards her. Yennefer kissed him again, deeper and wetter, his mouth opening to hers, felt the touch of his tongue, and the kiss went wild and messy, all the hunger they both felt for Geralt redirected to one another.

He made a little noise of surprise as she pushed him back and then obligingly went, pulling her on top of him. She was going to eat him _alive_.

When they finally broke for breath, it was too late to turn back. She hadn’t fucked anybody since Geralt, hadn’t wanted to, and now it seemed like the best idea in the world to fuck Jaskier. Jaskier _understood_. He had one hand on her arse, other arm loose around her neck and his cock was already hard against her thigh. It would have been embarrassing, how much she wanted him, but Yennefer was beyond embarrassment now. What was the point of all her power if it didn’t allow her to have a man when she wanted him?

“Come to my room,” she said, and kissed him again.

He made a helpless sound of wanting and kissed her back, opening for her, letting her take whatever she wanted from him. It was intoxicating.

“Just one question,” he asked, breaking away after a moment. “So I can judge how much performance anxiety it’s appropriate for me to be feeling right now: are you going to kill me if I don’t please you, or will you perhaps stay your hand and just horribly maim me?”

How original, a man who knew at least that he _ought_ to please her.

Yennefer smiled slowly down at him. “No, I’d just think less of you for the rest of your life.”

His eyebrows shot up. “So you currently think _something_ of me? Thought I’d started at rock bottom and was sinking a little further below ground every time you saw me.”

Her hair brushed his face when she shook her head. “You wrote a song for me that they’re singing all over the Continent. You’re back up to rock bottom.”

“Yennefer. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he deadpanned. “Actually it’s the only nice thing you’ve ever said to me, but I’ll take it.”

He did come up to her room. Followed her out of the hall and away from the carousing, and with his back to the locked door she was pleased to discover that he could unfasten a complicated dress one handed and without looking. And when he dropped to his knees, she was even more pleased to discover he very much _did_ know how to please a woman, and he also knew he could do it more than once.

By the time she pulled him off, her legs were trembling and Jaskier’s hair looked exactly like he’d made her come twice already, which he had. His mouth was red and wet, and when she walked him backwards towards the bed to fuck him she thought again that Geralt was a fool, to give up somebody who gave you everything like this.

Once she’d let the idea of Geralt in to her head she couldn’t get it out again.

“How did Geralt seduce you?” she asked, pulling him ungently out of his clothes, which he didn’t seem to mind. “Did he just grab you and take what he wanted?”

“Ha, no, it’s funny how everyone assumes that. He actually resisted my charms for several years before I convinced him to give me a chance, and then he was a consummate gentleman about it every time. But if we’re comparing experiences, then I’d have to say there was more grunting and a lot less talking. Oh god -”

“I’m sorry,” Yennefer said, letting her dress fall to the floor and stepping out of it, “am I interrupting the fantasy by using sentences?”

“No, you’re fine, I – you’re _incredibly_ beautiful, I wasn’t actually thinking about Geralt. I have a very vivid imagination but imagining you into him is beyond even me.”

She pushed him down on the bed. “Maybe I’m imagining that you’re him.”

Jaskier laughed then caught his breath when she gave his cock a firm stroke. “That must be almost as difficult as imagining _you’re_ him.”

He was nothing like Geralt, that much was sure. But if she was comparing them, Jaskier wasn’t coming out the loser. He was _lovely_ , now she could see him. As beautiful out of his clothes as in them, lean and lightly muscled, with long legs and hair on his chest, a fluid, unselfconscious grace to all his movements. She wanted him, with overwhelming un-magical desire, and there he was, waiting to be had.

“Geralt was the last man I fucked,” she said, letting the very tip of his cock slide inside where she was wet and aching for him. “And now here you are, his best friend, the man who knows his body so intimately they can catalogue his scars from your songs…”

Jaskier groaned, gripped her hips as she sank down onto him, thick and hard and holding almost still for her to take her pleasure from him.

“How does he take you?” she panted, knowing she shouldn’t ask but too lost in it to hold back. The image was too vivid, of Geralt in her mountain bed as she slowly took his cock, and still there in the morning, damn him.

Jaskier shook his head, unable or unwilling to answer. But he didn’t have to, not this close to a mage with power like hers. She could read his feelings: a pang of loss for years of friendly, drunken couplings in roadside inns; hands and mouths, slow mornings curled together against the cold. Evenings by firelight and stupid, meandering arguments that last for years. Parting ways and coming together again with a spike of delight. Fate wasn’t forcing them together: these idiots _liked_ each other, and they fucked because it felt good, that was all. They liked each other even more when they did it.

Jaskier was showing it to her – he certainly didn’t mean to, but he was feeling it too intensely and she wasn’t noble enough to look away from that vivid pulse of love that swept through him when she said Geralt’s name in bed. All of it, shining out at her.

Skin-warmed oil, what Geralt’s cock felt like inside Jaskier, and – oh, not what she expected: Geralt face down and arse up, falling apart as Jaskier fucked _him. Fuck,_ that was hot.

“He likes it when you take him?”

“He likes all of it,” Jaskier gasped, biting off a moan as she took him deeper. “He just never admits to it.”

“Go on. Tell me about Geralt. I want to know what he’s like when he’s fucking _you_. Without magic in the way.”

It was a kind of madness, talking like this, dragging Geralt into the bed with them to torment them both. He would hate it, to know the two of them were together, talking about him, comparing notes – she could imagine him so clearly it was as if he was really there, a scowling presence beside them as they found pleasure in each other. Jaskier groaned, ran his hands up her legs, her ribs, rubbed his thumbs across her nipples and made her shudder.

“It turns you on, doesn’t it? When I talk about him while I’m fucking you,” she whispered. “Knowing that I’ve had him too. Can you smell him on me? I can smell him on you, even now. Like he’s marked you -”

That, apparently, was the limit of provocation that Jaskier could withstand. He surged up, rolling them over and almost as soon as he touched her she was coming, clenching and crying out around the hard length of him inside her.

“Oh god,” he said, and then she watched, entranced, as he finally let go and followed her into climax. Mouth open, eyes closed, the vulnerable line of his throat right there for anyone to tear it out. He was so alive, so mortal, so marked by Geralt of Rivia of his own stupid free will, and she wanted him and she envied him and she pitied him and she wanted to use him to hurt Geralt and she knew it wouldn’t work. They were just two people having sex, both of them thinking of somebody else, who would never even know.

“That,” Jaskier told the ceiling as they lay side by side afterwards, not touching, “was one of the most unexpected sexual encounters of my entire life.”

“And it’s never happening again,” she said firmly.

“Oh no. Definitely not. One time thing, absolutely,” he agreed.

***

It was absolutely not a one time thing.

Jaskier wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t going to argue with Yennefer of fucking Vengerberg when he was lying naked in her bed and could still taste her. In fact he wasn’t going to argue with her at any time, ever, but as soon as she’d said it was never happening again, he’d already suspected that it would. In his personal experience, women only bothered to say you could never sleep together again if they actually wanted to.

He’d got out of bed not long afterwards, staying only long enough to be polite and not long enough for her to regret it and decide to murder him after all. Yennefer’s eyes were closed as he picked his clothes up from the floor and dressed by candlelight, but he thought she wasn’t quite asleep.

The bed was soft and warm, and so was Yennefer, and she smelled good and she was quite possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever slept with. Even once he was dressed he felt stripped raw by her, overwhelmed by tenderness and actually in danger of giving way to tears if she was too nice or too cruel to him. He didn’t want to leave but it was too great a risk to take.

Geralt might have said that this was typical of him, getting into trouble with women, but that wasn’t how it was at all - Jaskier’s problems had never, ever come from the women. With them he was perfectly in tune. He found that he wanted what they wanted, enjoyed bringing them pleasure, and knew when he was wanted overnight and when he was not.

Tonight his instincts were telling him very loudly to leave, even though his body was begging to stay.

Yennefer lay on her stomach, her hair a dark wave on the pillow and her back a beautiful curve with the sheet barely reaching her waist. He couldn’t quite believe he’d made love to her, that she’d let him. That she’d _wanted_ him.

He sat beside her and said softly, “Yennefer? I’ve got to go.”

She made a sleepy soft sound high in her throat and turned towards him onto her side. He could see her breasts now and that didn’t make it any easier.

“Will I see you again?” he asked. He cleared his throat “I’ll be in Ker Mjoran for the equinox. There are merchant houses looking for mages there, if you were interested in hearing their offers.”

“I might.”

“You can ask for me there, if you go.”

Yennefer smiled at him and patted his thigh. “I can find you anywhere you go, Jaskier.”

“That’s not at all threatening, thank you. Will you do something terrible to me if I kiss you goodbye?”

Her smile softened. At least, he chose to believe it did.

“No,” she said.

So he kissed her, and she kissed him back with her hand in his hair, and then he made himself leave.

When he fell asleep in his own room, he had strange, vivid dreams about Geralt. He couldn’t remember the details in the morning but all the next day he kept turning to say something to him, and each time the realisation that he wasn’t there hit him like a gut punch.

*

She was there, at the equinox.

He optimistically left a message for her at the huge, prosperous coaching inn where most travellers stopped, and they ended up back there together at the end of the night.

This time it was his room, and he lay in bed afterwards watching her dress. She didn’t seem to mind being watched.

“I want to make an impact at the Tykoral banquet. I need you to come and play the Dragon Song at a strategic moment for me,” she said as she brushed out her hair in the mirror, not looking at him.

He had to wait a moment before he could answer, to hide how pleased he was.

“Really?”

“Yes, Jaskier. Really.”

“Not to appear venal, or mercenary, or like I’m trying to put a price on my art – or our friendship, which I of course cherish - ”

“Yes, I can pay you.”

She turned from the mirror and got to her feet, smiling a predatory smile. He was extremely, thrillingly aware of how vulnerable he was, how completely at her mercy, and also how it looked for a fully dressed person to be promising to pay the naked person they’d just fucked. There was something a little bit thrilling about that too, if he was being honest with himself.

*

Yennefer took him to bed after the banquet too.

Now that he was working with her they’d been able to plan the absolutely best moment for her to make an entrance, and on a professional level he was extremely pleased with how it had gone. And, he couldn’t deny, on a personal level too. He was starting to like Yennefer, although he knew better than to tell her that.

Afterwards ,while he was half way to falling asleep, she got up to fetch the coin she’d promised him and he woke up when she put the bag down on his bare chest. 

“For your…services,” she said. Clearly she knew how it sounded, and the look on her face said she knew the effect it had on him.

Jaskier propped himself up on one elbow. He tossed the bag of coin into the air and caught it with a satisfying clink.

“For this much, you could have even more services. If you were interested,” he said, looking up at her.

Yennefer smiled like she would eat him whole, and dropped her robe.

*

In Aerdin, they demanded he play his Witcher songs. His voice cracked once near the end of his set and he had to improvise a longer instrumental until the memory of waking up to the woodsmoke smell of Geralt’s hair had receded enough for him to carry on singing.

After that it seemed stupid to pretend he didn’t care, so Jaskier broke his own rule and asked if anybody had seen him. One of the travellers had.

“He was going north, something about an alghoul, they said.”

“How was he?” Jaskier pressed. “Silent, brooding and unfriendly?”

It felt like a betrayal as soon as he’d said it, and an even worse one when the man chuckled. But he answered the real question.

“He seemed fine. Of course, they’re dishonest bastards up there - he’d best watch himself if he takes a contract with them.”

“Oh, Geralt can look after himself,” Jaskier said breezily, but it felt like yet another stab in the back. Geralt had told _him_ to leave, but still. Still.

He dreamed of Geralt again that night, the way the muscle in his jaw would twitch when Jaskier said something funny and he had to fight not to laugh. Dream Geralt kissed him, in a forest somewhere, and then Jaskier was fucking him, sweet and hot and holding him close, and he woke up so turned on he had to jerk off like a teenager.

***

It rained and rained and rained as Geralt moved north. Cold, relentless rain from a grey sky that made fires impossible even with Ignis. It was fine. He could eat raw food.

Everything was damp, all the time, but it wasn’t cold enough to be dangerous so he still avoided the few villages strung out on the miserable, godforsaken road and slept in the woods. When he’d travelled with Jaskier, they only ever slept out in the rain if there was really no choice about it, and Jaskier would complain constantly, creatively and with great flourishes of language and snatches of song that were a force of nature all by themselves.

Jaskier was more inclined to spend his coin on a roof over his head than Geralt, and they’d argued about that plenty of times.

“It’s my coin, I earned it - ”

“Singing about _me_.”

“Well then, you go just go ahead and sing about yourself and see if you can’t supplement your own income! But I’m spending mine on a room to get out of this _bastard_ rain, and if I have a room then it’s stupid for you not to share it. There, I said it – it’s stupid and, and – childish, and - ”

“Why does it matter what I do? You can still stay at the fucking inn if you want to!”

“Now I don’t even want to! If I have to stay there alone, knowing that you’re sleeping in the rain to make a point like some kind of _martyr_ nobody asked for - ”

Geralt honestly couldn’t remember now why he’d been so adamant he wouldn’t share the room.

They’d walked on, in the rain and in furious silence, because there was nothing else to do.

“I’d just rather have your company than not have it, that’s all,” Jaskier said eventually, sounding resigned and not even angry any more, and Geralt felt it like a physical blow. _I’d rather have your company than not have it._ What was he supposed to _do_ with a statement like that?

“Fine,” Geralt growled at him. “I’ll share the damn room with you. Happy now?”

“I’m _ecstatic_ ,” Jaskier had muttered, sarcastic. “You’ve made me the happiest man on the Continent, truly.”

Geralt elbowed him in the ribs and then had to catch him when it nearly knocked him off his feet.

He remembered Yennefer’s magic-built tent from the mountains too, with its fine furniture and soft linens, and he tried not to remember the carved bed they’d made love in or the look on her face when she’d woken up to see he was still there. He had allowed himself to become distracted, to grow soft, to think he could live like the human man he wasn’t. He had physical needs that he could slake in brothels, and that was enough.

Yennefer thought the djinn was responsible for her feelings, but as far as Geralt could see it didn’t matter either way whether his own were real or magical. Having feelings for a woman wouldn’t slay a monster, wouldn’t put coin in his pocket, wouldn’t even do the woman in question any good. She wanted a child, and he couldn’t give her one even if she found a remedy for her own barrenness.

Gragzant was a dirty, cold shithole, and the people who lived there probably deserved to.

They were suspicious, hostile, as dirty and ugly as the town and they stank almost as badly. Geralt walked Roach in slowly, not wanting to frighten them, but by the time the third stone had almost hit his head he wished he’d come charging in to scare the shit out of them. He was going to stop but they made it perfectly clear he wasn’t needed and wasn’t welcome, so he kept on walking and didn’t even try to get a hot meal in the sad tavern the place boasted.

As he was leaving, he heard the sound of hooves and an ill-kempt horse and rider pulled up within shouting distance.

“They’ve a black fiend in the next village, if it’s work you’re after,” called the man.

Geralt hadn’t even turned around, which was probably risky but certainly an effective power play in a place like this. He didn’t turn properly now either, or even stop, just looked over his shoulder and grunted. The man was better dressed than the rest of the villagers he’d seen, probably a figure of some local influence, but he also looked like he’d throw stones for fun not just fear so it wasn’t really an improvement.

“Witcher! I said there’s a black fiend up in Bodzen! Or are you too afraid to take it on?”

Geralt didn’t stop walking.

“You’re fucked if I am,” he said. “Unless you’ve got another Witcher waiting to have a go.”

There was no reply from behind him and he didn’t look back, but he could hear the horse following. Roach whinnied, tossing her head, ill at ease with this rider who didn’t pass and didn’t catch up and didn’t go away.

“It’s taking children,” the man called. “You’ll not even be man enough to hunt a beast that slaughters children?”

That was when Geralt should have walked away. Kept walking, veered off the road, not got involved. Because black fiends didn’t take children, not unless children round here were out alone, at night, wandering off the path and into the empty moors where the creatures lived.

“I’m not a man at all,” was all he said, and instead of walking away, he kept walking forward. Which wasn’t the same thing at all.

Bodzen was the next village on the road, and they seemed to be expecting him.

There were no stones thrown here. Two men came out to meet him, full of welcome and good cheer, and Geralt didn’t trust them as far as he could throw them. Which wouldn’t have been very far even with his strength: they were both solid and corpulent, smelling of spoiled meat and fear.

“Venison for our Witcher friend!” called out the older of the two, escorting him into the dark tavern with his hand on Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt looked down at the hand and didn’t move, and he took it away with a weak smile.

“We’ve lost three children to the beast, this last sevenday,” he explained, radiating sadness. “A tragedy, in this close community.”

The younger man nodded, looking intently right into Geralt’s eyes. It was either intended to convey sincerity or to force him to look away first, but it had been a long time since Geralt took someone like this at their word or wasted his time on dick-swinging contests of masculinity. He wasn’t going to sit here gazing at a lumpy northern alderman just to prove he wasn’t intimidated.

“Where were they taken from?” he asked, as a nervous innkeeper brought him a plate of food. The younger man coughed until he retreated from the table.

“The moors, where they were gathering lingonberries.”

“Your children gather lingonberries at night?”

“Who said it was at night?”

“If it was a black fiend that took them, then it was at night,” Geralt told him. “Because they can only see in the dark.”

The two men exchanged a glance.

He knew he shouldn’t have come here. Maybe there really was a beast of some kind and maybe there wasn’t, but there was definitely some human business behind it all as well.

“We’re no experts in monsters, sir Witcher,” said the alderman, shaking his head. “Perhaps this beast has another name. But it has taken three children, that much we know. The villagers have put together their coin to pay you, if you can find it and slay it.”

Geralt looked from one to the other, at their performatively earnest faces and the fear he could smell on them. It wasn’t his job to understand human affairs. If they wanted him to look for a monster that wasn’t going to be the monster they said it was, and they had coin to pay him, what did he care what was going on underneath? It was none of his business.

The moors were desolate and windswept, as moors always were.

Geralt hunted for the black fiend, or any beast, for three days without success, and as dawn approached on the fourth day he’d pretty much given it up as misinformation. Maybe the thing had been passing through, or maybe there had never been a beast at all but the people’s anger needed a scapegoat to blame for the deaths. He was about to head back to the village and tell them to keep their coin and keep their children in at night when something hit him, very hard, from behind.

There had been no warning, no sound, no smell, not a footprint or a nest nor any scat, and he had no idea what was on top of him. It sent him crashing to his knees, then its weight was on him, pushing him face down into the damp ground.

He couldn’t reach his swords with the thing on his back, it was phenomenally heavy and he couldn’t get up – a knife, he could reach a knife – but before he could do anything else, there was a sharp pain in the back of his neck as if something had stung him and all the strength flowed out of him like water from a broken bottle. He was still conscious, still trying to fight, but he couldn’t move and darkness was creeping in at the edge of his vision.

The last thing he saw before the darkness took him, was a very human pair of boots in front of him. Ah, thought Geralt, well there you are then.

He woke up in a stone cell. They were going to hang him for the murders, they said, and he honestly wasn’t all that surprised.

***

There was a bitter wind and a grey sky when they brought him to the town square to hang him. It hadn’t deterred the crowd: they liked an execution in the north, especially when it was somebody like him. Hostile faces jeered at him as they dragged him out. They were packed too tightly to risk throwing stones, at least, but they looked like they would have if they could.

Music came from his left, and got closer: the kind of mocking, rabble-rousing tune he’d always hated. Well. He only had to bear it for a few more minutes, he supposed, and then it would all be over. It sounded like a lute.

In the worst tradition of small town justice, the crowd parted to let the musician approach his victim. Geralt didn’t look at him and didn’t react. He knew how not to give them the satisfaction.

Until he started singing in a voice that Geralt knew.

It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. He’d always hated executions, would never play one however badly they’d needed the coin, preferred to sleep in the woods than earn a roof over his head that way. Geralt had never argued with him about that.

Geralt turned slowly towards the sound as they pushed him towards the scaffold. He didn’t want to see, but he had to.

Jaskier looked just like he had the last time they’d seen each other on that mountainside. He might even have been wearing the same clothes. There was something brittle about his smile, more artifice than he usually employed on stage - Jaskier’s performance was just an amplified version of himself, usually, but for this, to see a former friend well and truly hanged, he seemed to have chosen a different persona. Somebody mocking and cruel, who wanted the crowd not to laugh with him, but at who he told them to. Not that this crowd needed much encouraging.

Their eyes met for a second before Jaskier looked away with a grimace, and somebody pushed Geralt hard enough that he stumbled.

“Alright, I’m going,” he snarled.

The mayor was waiting for him on the raised wooden platform of the scaffold, rubbing his hands with glee. It was a gift for him, really, such an obviously guilty murderer from outside the community. The best scapegoat he could have hoped for. Geralt could almost understand why he was doing it.

He could almost understand why Jaskier was doing it too. Almost. He had been cruel to Jaskier, he knew he had, but this seemed – exponentially crueller. Unless Jaskier’s feelings for him had run deeper than he suspected. He’d already suspected they ran pretty deep, and had done nothing to extricate himself until it was much, much too late. Well then Witcher, he said to himself. If you see the danger coming and you don’t get out of the way, what do you _think_ is going to happen?

Rough hands pushed him forward, up onto the platform, fitted and tightened the noose around his neck and stepped back. Every condemned man dies alone, even if he’s not exactly a man. The town square didn’t look any nicer from up here. The crowd looked worse.

Jaskier led the jeers and catcalls right up to the scaffold.

The lute he was playing wasn’t Filavandrel’s. It seemed important to notice things like that in the last few seconds of his life. He was just holding it, too, no strap around his neck, and nobody stopped him when he climbed on to the platform to finish his song. One of the nasty, vicious songs he’d always refused to play before, but then he had always said Geralt was his muse. 

Geralt closed his eyes then. He should have been able to take it, but he didn’t want to see Jaskier hating him right before he died.

So he didn’t actually see him drop the lute and pull out a knife.

He just heard the hollow melodic clunk as it hit the ground, and felt the tremble in the air as Jaskier leapt at him. Then impact: the solid weight of Jaskier’s body colliding with his, cutting the noose above his head.

He opened his eyes again to see a portal appear, and knew that the third person pushing them through it must be Yennefer of Vengerberg.

They landed in a heap on a stone floor, the noose still around Geralt’s neck and his wrists tied behind his back. Unable to break his fall, the breath was knocked out of him and only the tangle of limbs that was Jaskier underneath him stopped him going face down onto the floor. Panting harshly, Jaskier was trying to push him off and scramble out from under him and pull the rope off his neck with his fucking hands, his shaking hands, which was never going to work, and why the fuck was he panicking _now_ – and then Yennefer sat up beside them and cut the ropes with a perfectly controlled burst of Ignis.

Geralt immediately rolled off Jaskier, backing away, and scrambled, breathless, to his feet. He was ready to fight, if there was any fighting to be done. All of his instincts were screaming at him that there was, there had to be, they’d been about to kill him and now he must fight for his life -

But there wasn’t. Yennefer had removed them so totally from that dirty village, the mob jeering at him, the gleeful alderman, and now they were in a large room in some kind of dwelling, solid and well-built, with good quality furniture and a fire in the grate. Grey afternoon light shone through the windows. It was like another world. He was transformed from hanged to saved, and Jaskier – Jaskier hadn’t been mocking him at all, he hadn’t crossed the Continent as winter drew in to spit at Geralt as he died, he’d done it to rescue him, and somehow, incredibly, so had Yennefer of Vengerberg. The two people he had been most sure he would never and should never see again.

“Oh my god,” said Jaskier weakly, going limp on the floor. He lay there with his hands on his chest and one knee raised until Yennefer went to him, reached out her hand to pull him up.

Her hair was loose and shining, her dress black and silver and cut low at the front. The two of them were here. Together. She’d helped Jaskier up and they were standing closer to each other than to him. He could hear their hearts beating wildly, smell fresh fear sweat and adrenaline on both of them. The tang of magic in the air.

“I thought you’d come to see me hang,” he said stupidly.

Jaskier opened his mouth and closed it again before he turned to Yennefer. He was still breathing hard and his eyes were very wide and blue in his pale face. Geralt couldn’t quite take him in. Of course it hadn’t been Filavandrel’s lute, because he’d never drop Filavandrel’s lute on a scaffold to save Geralt’s life.

Or perhaps he would. Geralt didn’t know anything any more.

“You know what, Yenn, I’ve changed my mind – _let_ them hang him! Let’s just, just – put him back!” Jaskier said, pointing at Geralt like there was any doubt who he meant or there was some other Witcher he might want to put back.

Yennefer raised her hands in defeat. “He’s fine, obviously,” she said.

“Why are you here together?” That probably wasn’t the most urgent question, but it was the one he most needed them to address right now. There was a lot to process, and he was struggling to work through it.

“We’re friends now actually, Geralt,” Jaskier told him, putting his hands on his hips.

“We’ve had sex - five times?” added Yennefer. “Has it been five times?”

Even Jaskier looked surprised, but then he shrugged and went with it, nodding in confirmation.

“I suppose it’s best to get that out in the open right away, isn’t it?”

Yennefer of Venerberg and Jaskier had had sex five times? _His_ Jaskier? Was that really what she had said? Geralt could feel the words bouncing off his understanding and away, never to return. (Perhaps he was dead. He’d been nearly dead several times and it hadn’t been like this at all, but then it hadn’t taken.) None of what was happening was going in. He’d been about to die – ready for it, resigned to it. Had to happen some day, why not now? An efficient hanging didn’t even hurt.

Geralt rubbed his wrists and blinked at them. Jaskier already didn’t smell like fear any more. He smelled his old familiar self, and so did Yennefer. Now that they’d mentioned the sex, he could tell they smelled a little like each other. Like people who touch one another did. They were perfectly clean, recently bathed even, and they still smelled like one another in the casual sort of way friends and family and longstanding lovers did. Last time he’d seen them, Jaskier had smelled like _him_ in that way. Yennefer had only ever smelled like herself. Gooseberries and lilac.

Yenn waved her hands at both of them, shaking her head.

“Start again. Just, let’s start again.” Her breasts rose as she took a deep breath. She was incredibly beautiful. She had appeared by magic to save him. “Geralt. Hello. If you recall, your destiny is tied to mine.”

He nodded.

“So I couldn’t let you die.”

“It doesn’t mean you die if I do,” he managed. “You could have had your freedom from me.”

“I know, but I don’t _want_ you to die. Jaskier doesn’t either,” she added, almost accusingly.

“No,” agreed Jaskier. “Not really. Only as a figure of speech after you say things like _, I thought you’d come to watch me hang._ ”

That was his imitation of Geralt, scowling and making his voice low and gravelly. He’d done it before and people said it was quite convincing. Yennefer snorted an inelegant laugh, anyway. He liked it when she did that. The rest of her image was so carefully composed, that when she gave you an unfiltered reaction like that laugh, that didn’t fit how she looked, it meant something.

It meant something, but he didn’t know what. 

“You’ve had sex five times?” Geralt repeated, asking her, but Jaskier echoed, in his Geralt voice, “ _You’ve had sex five times?”_

Geralt scowled at him and didn’t know what to say.

“Yes, Geralt, you weren’t there and we realised we had quite a lot in common. I wrote a song about her, you probably haven’t heard it but it’s _very_ popular.”

“I’ve heard it.” 

“Well, there you are then, I think that’s all our news. Anything else he needs to know, Yenn?”

She shook her head and didn’t speak, and then surprised him by crossing the space between them and throwing her arms around him. She was trembling as he returned the embrace, closing his eyes and burying his face in her hair. It was a relief not to have to say or do anything for a second, to just hold her silently for as long as she would let him. He couldn’t remember why he’d been angry with her on that mountain, why they’d lashed out at each other, any of it. He held her close and breathed her in. If he was clinging, she was kind enough not to tell him so and he wanted to kiss her but he wouldn’t unless she initiated it. His body was telling him urgently that this was a good idea, that he’d spent all day thinking he would die and now it needed the simulacrum of making life - fight, flight or fuck.

Eventually she lifted her head and glanced at Jaskier in silent complicity that Geralt didn’t know to take. Jaskier was obviously furious with him, but his body was absolutely not taking that into account. It thought Jaskier looked eminently fuckable, all bright tired eyes and open doublet, the way he moved and stood and gestured all begging to be taken, like that anger was something he could solve with sex. He _had_ solved Jaskier’s anger with sex before – cutting him off mid complaint with a kiss, wordlessly pushing him down and sucking his cock until the storm passed. Possibly Jaskier had been angry with him about about less important things, then.

While he was letting his cock do the thinking for him, something Yennefer saw in Jaskier’s expression made her pull away.

“Go and bathe, Geralt,” she said. “We’ll talk more when you don’t stink of prison and execution.”

“It’s probably onion,” muttered Jaskier.

Geralt almost repeated it back at him in an imitation of Jaskier’s voice, to see how he liked it, but stopped himself at the last moment.

***

Jaskier had forgotten what it felt like, being caught in Geralt’s orbit. As if there was a magnetic force pulling him in, so he couldn’t think about anything else – all that hard-won perspective from the months he hadn’t seen him was just gone in a shower of sparks as soon as he’d caught sight of the man.

Seeing Geralt again had been more of a shock than he was expecting. Especially like that: pale, unarmed and unarmoured, dragged across the marketplace to his death. Diminished, somehow, by these low people who hated him for no reason, with no one to speak in his defence. He hadn’t looked at all surprised to see Jaskier there in his odious masquerade as rabble-rouser, which had stung. If Geralt wasn’t surprised to see him come to jeer at his death, it implied that even after all these years, he’d never really trusted Jaskier at all. _I thought you’d come to see me hang._

He ought to leave, probably. Geralt was alive, he was fine. He was here with Yennefer, and however secretly fond Jaskier had become of her as well, he was under no illusions about his own importance to either of them when they were together. He might as well not exist, for all the difference it made to them. He’d done what they needed him to do, and it would be a lot less painful just to leave now.

Yennefer had turned up the previous day, almost crackling with anger, to demand his help. It was incredible to think that a mage with her power could possibly need his help, but she had disdainfully explained something about focus and timing and the energy drain of making an extremely precise and time-sensitive portal while there was a noose around Geralt’s neck, and he’d let it lie. If he ever saw her again, then he could make fun of her for asking for help from the likes of him, but he hadn’t done it then and he wasn’t going to risk it now either.

It didn’t help that they hadn’t slept. She had brought him here last night, close enough to ride in for the execution in the morning, and neither of them had been able to sleep. There was one bedchamber and they had lain side by side, tossing and turning and asking each other questions they already knew the answers to. Having sex might have helped them settle, but they didn’t.

Yennefer wore a soft, diaphanous shift to bed which reached down to her knees, like something a country milkmaid would wear. He’d already seen her naked, put his mouth all over her body, but something about her smooth brown legs in that modest garment affected him almost more than her nudity would have done.

He didn’t say that, though. He’d lain there in his smallclothes, and every time he dozed off he would wake up with a jolt like falling, a sick sense of dread telling him he had already failed, that he would go there only to watch Geralt die right in front of him, hear the crack as his neck broke and see the light go out of his eyes. Maybe he’d been a little closer to heartbroken than he had wanted to admit, but that had done absolutely nothing to help him stop caring about the Witcher.

Just before dawn, Yennefer rolled over with a frustrated sigh and curled up to him. It was so obviously non-sexual that he had squeezed his eyes shut against a wave of emotion and moved his arm so she could rest her head more comfortably on his shoulder. In the cold light of the way she looked at Geralt and Geralt looked at her it was pretty crushing, that he could be in her bed and all she wanted from him was the animal comfort of another warm body to sleep next to. At the time, naively, he’d actually been rather moved. He might even have kissed the top of her head, but she had probably been asleep.

Now as they listened to the faint sounds of water that was Geralt bathing, she was still bristling like an angry cat and he had no intention of trying to touch her. He stretched out on a low couch and closed his eyes, and Yennefer paced, and as soon as Geralt came back out he would leave, he decided.

He woke up with no sense of how much time had passed, to see Yennefer in Geralt’s arms, kissing him. Deep and passionate, the kind of kiss you take straight to bed, and he was blindsided by an astonishing pang of jealousy like nothing he’d ever felt before in his life. He didn’t get jealous, ever – who was he to claim exclusivity over a lover? But to open his eyes to that, to the two of them so wrapped up in each other, hit him harder than he had expected. Like a low blow he hadn’t seen coming. Well. More fool him.

Yennefer was the first to notice he was awake.

“Jaskier,” she said, pulling away from Geralt and going to him. He couldn’t bear her pity.

“I’m off then,” he managed, voice still clumsy with sleep and his tone ringing false even in his own ears. “You two rascals try and stay out of trouble, and I’ll see you around - if you run into any more executions, I’ll do my best to help…”

“Jaskier,” she said, in a voice that so clearly expressed _don’t be an idiot_ that he wondered if she’d put the message into his head with magic.

“Oh come on,” he retorted. “I did everything you wanted – or do you need me to go back for the horse?”

“What? No, I bribed the stablehand, the horse is here. I don’t want you to leave.”

Which was nice of her, it really was, but there was a point in a man’s life when he was too old to chase after scraps any more. He’d realised that coming down the mountain, and when he was composing the Dragon Song, and Geralt being here didn’t actually change anything. The thing had run its course, and if Jaskier had learned anything from 20 years of transient love affairs, it was when to cut his losses and to move on. Of course, he used to have Geralt to take his mind off the losses that hurt more than the rest rather than being one of them, but he would just have to adapt. It hurt so much more than he had expected, but he would get used to it because he had to.

“I know dignity hasn’t been my defining feature in any of my dealings with you,” he managed, getting to his feet. “But I’ve got to have _some_. I can’t stay and – watch. The two of you. With your magic bond. I won’t.”

“It’s not the two of us,” said Yennefer, low and dangerous and standing in his way. “You just woke up, you’re being stupid – _Geralt_ , tell your friend to stop being an arse.”

“Oh I’m sorry, did you want me to hang around to provide the mood music?”

“If you start singing now,” Geralt growled, “I really will go back and let them hang me.”

There was only one possible response to that.

Jaskier looked him right in the eye, spread his arms wide, and started to sing the Dragon Song. Everything about this was exquisitely painful, and falling back on childish provocation felt entirely fair. If he really worked at it, this might even be the time Geralt finally snapped and hit him like he meant it, and then they’d know where they stood, wouldn’t they?

Geralt didn’t hit him.

Geralt crossed the room in two strides, very fast, and grabbed him with both fists in his shirt front. Pulled him close, almost off his feet so he had to brace himself with one hand on Geralt’s bicep and the other on his wrist as if he could actually break his iron grip, and held him frozen there with their faces inches apart.

Jaskier stopped singing. Geralt was startlingly warm, solid and muscular and massive and so familiar Jaskier wanted to cry. He’d spent half his life wanting Geralt, travelling with him, eating breakfast and lunch and dinner with him and going hungry with him too. Telling him everything and nothing, getting on his nerves, laughing at his jokes and knowing all the different qualities of his silences, but this one was beyond him.

“I can always _make_ you stay,” Yennefer said, sliding her hand into his hair and pulling. “If it would make you feel better to think you didn’t have a choice.”

Geralt scowled at her. “Yenn,” he said, warning, apparently choosing to overlook the fact that his death grip could also be construed as not leaving him a choice.

“Oh, keep up, Geralt, he likes it when I threaten him. Especially now you’re here to protect him.”

If he’d really cared about his dignity, he might have tried harder to swallow the little moan that elicited. There was no hiding anything from Yennefer.

“You don’t want me to leave, you don’t want me to sing - what, pray tell, _do_ you want me here for?” Jaskier asked with the last of his composure.

Geralt’s golden glare came back to him. His heart was beating furiously, like it didn’t know whether to be afraid, or turned on, or maybe both. Yennefer’s hand was firm in his hair, and Geralt’s thigh was braced against his: he was pinned and electrified in the middle of their magical fucking bond and he was very, very aware that he’d fucked both of them. Had willingly, gladly, gone to bed with each of them in turn, and left a little bit of himself behind every time. Both of them could kill him with barely a thought.

“I want you to be quiet and take your clothes off,” Geralt said, in his lowest, most gravelly voice, and all the blood that had been rushing around Jaskier’s body went straight to his cock.

It was the voice that did it as much as his words. The way he sounded when he was half asleep, or sinking into a hot bath, or about to come. Jaskier couldn’t help himself, he melted into Geralt with a mortifying sigh of surrender.

Dignity was overrated anyway.

Geralt had the good grace to kiss him then, not leave him hanging and wanting and hold out on him. It was one of his really filthy kisses, a proper tongue-fucking like he was going to eat Jaskier alive and make him enjoy every second of it. More forceful than he normally was, too – possibly more forceful than he had ever been. There had been a certain quality of forbearance to their interactions sometimes, where he managed to imply he was just tolerating Jaskier’s company and Jaskier’s presence in his bed, like he was doing Jaskier a favour by fucking him. Which, fine, Geralt was horrendously, overwhelmingly hot, he could have anybody he wanted, surely – but mostly so could Jaskier. There were so many people to love, and he did, frequently, and they loved him back.

The only person he’d ever waited years to seduce was Geralt; anybody else who held out on him, he shrugged and moved on. Plenty more fish in the sea, so to speak. But it had been twenty years now, and he’d never been able to shrug off his feelings for the Witcher. There was a saying, about your first love, that Jaskier tried very hard not to think about, but he knew the truth of it all the same.

Geralt took him straight to bed, and Yennefer came with them like there had never been any question about it. There hadn’t, really.

“Are we – going to talk about this?” he asked, breathless, as Geralt pushed him down. “I haven’t seen you for months, I’ve been sleeping with your girlfriend - ”

“No,” said Geralt firmly.

“That’s sweet, that you think of it that way round,” Yennefer said, leaning over him to unlace his shirt. “Because I always thought, oh look, I’m fucking Geralt’s bard. Off - ”

He sat up to let her pull the shirt over his head.

“Right, right, not talking about anything, good, very on-brand for you - ”

Geralt started to take his own clothes off then, and whatever he’d been about to say went right out of his head.

Yennefer smirked at him and pushed him down again. She didn’t look strong enough to push that hard – it hadn’t felt like a magical push, just a normal, physical shove with her small hands in the middle of his chest, but then he hadn’t tried very hard to resist. He lay there and watched her go up on her knees to reach for Geralt, tossing her hair over one shoulder as she unfastened his trousers.

“I told _him_ to take _his_ clothes off,” he objected.

“And now I’m telling you to take yours off,” she said. “You know what it is I like.”

“Scaring the shit out of people, but in a sexy way?” Jaskier offered.

Geralt actually grinned at that, and he couldn’t help shooting a smug look at Yennefer. _See? You may have your hands where you want them, but **I** made him laugh._

“He told you to be quiet, too.”

“Mm, but his life is hard and he’s used to disappointment. Aren’t you, Geralt?”

Geralt gently moved Yennefer’s hands aside to lean over him, one hand either side of his head. He was bare chested, medallion hanging loose so that it almost touched Jaskier. A shiver of instinctive almost-fear ran through him at the hungry look in Geralt’s eyes.

“Jaskier. It’s good to see you again. Please take your clothes off so I can fuck you.”

He normally made a point of not doing what Geralt told him to, or at least not right away, but then Geralt didn’t normally say things like that to him.

“Ok,” he breathed, and then he was scrambling out of his trousers while they both watched him, the weight of their joint gaze making him feel more naked and more turned on than he ever had in his life. Yennefer was absolutely right, he still had no sense of danger, if he thought getting into bed in between these two was a good idea.

Geralt’s half-dressed weight came down on him, fabric rough against his thighs and electric against his hard cock. His hands were everywhere: across his ribs, pushing his knees further apart, grabbing his arse and letting his fingertips tease against his hole until he whimpered, aching for it. He wrapped his arms around Geralt’s broad back, revelling in the strength of him, but Yennefer caught his hands and pinned them above his head.

“I can’t see like that,” she murmured, and when Geralt raised his head she kissed him, so close that Jaskier could hear the wet sound of their mouths together.

Geralt fucked him just like that, with Yennefer holding him down. Slicked oil into him with three thick fingers, showed his teeth when Jaskier writhed and begged for it, desperate and wrecked. They were both stronger than him, both totally focused on taking him apart, and all he could do was lie there and take it. Let Geralt’s massive cock fill him up, look up at Yennefer’s breasts as she leaned over him to keep kissing Geralt.

He could strain against her grip as hard as he liked and she didn’t even seem to notice, and the failed attempt only wound him tighter and tighter, Geralt’s cock driving deeper and deeper into him.

“I’m going to come,” he panted, right on the edge, not sure why he was bothering to tell them.

They broke the kiss to look down at him, and oh, that was why, that was definitely why, he wanted them to see him, to see the effect they had on him. Yennefer had wanted to know how Geralt fucked him, and now she did. Geralt fucked him deep and hard and possessive, driving out any thought of self-preservation he’d ever had. He wasn’t over the Witcher at all, he was never going to be over him. _I’m going to want him until the day I die,_ Jaskier realised distantly, and the thought was enough to make him come all over himself in an orgasm that never seemed to end and left him a gasping, shivering wreck.

Geralt growled, bit him, and came with a last thrust that almost broke him in half. It felt so good, he’d missed Geralt so much, and if this was going to get him killed one day he found he didn’t particularly care.

Yennefer let Geralt make out with him for what felt like a very long time before she interrupted, and it was pretty gratifying when it was his mouth she wanted on her. Geralt didn’t seem to take it as a slight. He licked and sucked at her breasts as she pulled Jaskier’s hair, and he got his reward fucking her into a second orgasm.

Jaskier wasn’t a kid any more and he hadn’t expected to get hard again, but the noises Geralt made as she rode him, the way he tried to stifle them with his mouth against her breasts, his arm muscles flexing and hips pumping – it was a lot to witness. Especially when she turned her unfocused gaze on him with a half smile that made his heart clench almost in pain as she climaxed around the hot length of Geralt’s cock.

They both had Geralt’s come trickling down their thighs when she took his cock in her mouth, and he came again with Geralt’s fingers back inside him too, stroking him where he was wet and sensitive and fucked open. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, and just let himself feel it.

***

The bed was wide and comfortable, and Geralt slept face down like a rock. Yennefer woke to birdsong, sat up on one elbow and watched him. She’d known him for years but this was only the second time she’d woken up to find him still there.

Jaskier woke up not long after she did, starting to stir as soon as she moved. He was in the middle, no way out of bed without climbing over her or Geralt, and she saw the reality of his position hit him as he blinked awake. She liked him a lot, but she enjoyed how frightened he was of her _so_ much. 

He scrubbed a hand over his face. His hair was a wild tangle where she’d pulled it, and there were red marks on his neck and chest from Geralt’s beard. Well-fucked was a good look on Jaskier, and he seemed to know it, too: he preened a little under her scrutiny, letting the sheet slide down as he stretched and yawned and biting his lip when he caught her eye.

Watching Geralt wake up was even more fun.

He startled awake, golden eyes suddenly open, his body tensing instantly as he realised the two of them were next to him in the bed. In a second he was sitting up, ready to fight. It pulled the sheet all the way down to Jaskier’s waist as he moved and he gave a comical double take when he saw how marked up he was. Maybe it hadn’t all been his stubble – if Jaskier _liked_ being bitten, she wasn’t going to feel bad for leaving a mark that still showed in the cold light of day. And if it looked like they’d both done it on purpose, to stake a claim, then she wasn’t going to apologise for that either.

Jaskier folded his hands across his bare stomach and smiled up at Geralt. It was embarrassing how in love he was with the Witcher. The soft looks, the teasing to get his attention, the way he’d dropped everything to help him and then rolled over for him so desperately in bed. With the tune of _The kettle called the pot black, it takes one to know one_ echoing in her head, Yennefer decided against mentioning it.

“Guilty conscience, Geralt?” he asked, all provocation. He was rubbing a finger over one of the marks and she was tempted to give him another one to go with it.

“Hm,” growled Geralt.

Jaskier turned to Yennefer. “He’s saying, thanks for saving my life and helping me expand my sexual horizons,” he explained. 

She could almost _see_ Geralt approach the cliff edge of denying that last night had expanded his sexual horizons, realise it would inevitably open him to questions about his previous sexual experiences, and then back away to leave the statement unchallenged.

Jaskier held one hand up and began ticking points off on his fingers.

“And he also said, sorry I was so horrible to both of you after that dragon hunt, sorry I’m such an emotionally repressed person but I was brought up that way so I can’t help it, and that we’re both devastatingly hot, incredibly generous lovers, and he’s lucky to have us.”

Geralt growled again and got out of bed. He really was a lot to look at, naked, so she looked.

“This,” he told them, searching around for his clothes, “Is never happening again. Understood?”

He picked up a pair of trousers, realised they were Jaskier’s, and dropped them with a scowl.

“No, of course not. Definitely not,” Yennefer agreed, relaxing against the pillows.

Geralt turned his back to grab a black garment off the floor, and she enjoyed that view a lot too. He threw it to her with a growl when it turned out to be part of her dress.

Jaskier just lay there, smiling. She didn’t need to look at him to know what he was thinking.

*

It was approaching spring when she saw them next. The sun had broken through, and sheltered from the wind in the Vizima marketplace, it was almost warm.

She heard the singing before she saw him, but there was no doubt who it was.

A few heads in the busy street turned to listen as he came around the corner, singing the chorus to the Dragon Song, and his whole face lit up when he saw her. The fanfare was gratifying, but the way he crossed the market square straight to her was what made her shake her hair off her shoulders and let her wrap slide away from her breast where her neckline plunged.

“And Geralt?” she asked when he kissed her hand, a twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, he’s here at the inn, fussing over his horse. He did say he wanted to travel alone but then he caught up with me two days later. He pretended it was because there were bandits and I’d need his help and I pretended to believe him, and three months later here we are.”

“And did you have any trouble with bandits?”

“Astonishingly, no. His presence must have been enough to scare them off.”

“What a fortunate journey for you both.”

Jaskier broke into a boyish grin that suggested he had enjoyed some kind of roadside winter honeymoon and considered it a very fortunate journey indeed, and offered her his arm.

“Since destiny has seen fit to bring us together again, would you like to have lunch with us? I’m sure Geralt won’t object to the three of us having lunch together, will he?” His eyes sparkled very blue in the sunlight and there was a faint mark on his throat, just visible above his collar.

In the marketplace, someone was whistling Jaskier’s other song everybody knew, the one about Geralt. The Toss a Coin song.

Yennefer took Jaskier’s arm, and set off down the blossoming street to the White Wolf of legend, the one from the song, the one destiny had tied her to. But the Dragon Song was about _her,_ and when he saw her Geralt of Rivia stood and came to her, unsmiling and glad, as if he had been waiting for her all this time. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by one of those posts on tumblr that I can't find but which shall live on in my heart forever, and by the amazing fictional universe of my friend Bomberqueen17, who gave us a Jaskier/Yennefer sex scene that came to my house, slapped me in the face and kissed me on the mouth, and then settled down in my kitchen to eat my crisps and drink my gin so that I would have to think about it for the rest of my life. Please, please PLEASE read [Innermost Depths](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22847020), or actually, since you're probably trapped in coronavirus plague lockdown and can't leave the house so it's not like you're BUSY, read all of [Meet Death Sitting](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639717) so that you get to enjoy it in context!
> 
> My girl Cicak was kind enough to workshop the ending of this with me, and if you want to read a fic that knows all about rhythm and delayed gratification and call and response and the power of a really good ending, then you should read [Look what you made me do](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135105). 
> 
> (I'm thinking we should all use these end notes to rec a couple of fics that really get us where we live, kinda like the Amazon 'Products related to this item' feature? Because, again, it's not like anyone's BUSY in March 2020, is it?)
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/) for more thoughts on Showing Geralt of Rivia a Good Time even though I'm agressively Not Into Henry Cavill! It's weird how these things work, isn't it?


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